The blog of the University of Edinburgh's PIR subject area

Two weeks before the start of the London 2012 Olympics, its security arrangements began to fall apart. G4S, a private security company contracted to provide 10,000 security guards revealed that it would miss this target by several thousand. The government called in the army to provide the missing labour. Nick Buckles, chief executive of G4S, was called in front on a parliamentary committee to account for the failings, where he was forced to accept it was a ‘humiliating shambles’ for his company.